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How do we treat the VAT element on say, a Tesco receipt when some items are zero rated and exempt and others are standard rated? It would be a very time consuming exercise to calculate it all manually. Also, how does it work with food purchased at a supermarket? I have a small food manufacture client who regularly buys ingredients from supermarkets for New Product Developement, some raw and some pre-prepared etc. Is there any VAT to reclaim on this?

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... to take the receipt and add up all the items with the little "*" beside them. They're the VATable items, divide the total by 6 and you've got your VAT content.

All food items will be zero-rated other than the likes of crisps, confectionery, bottled/canned drinks, etc.

It's all there in the little "*" though.

You could always do two shops; one to get the zero-rated items (food, books, magazines, kids clothes) and one to get the standard-rated items. I assume your client's got no need for any lower-rated ("**") items in his business (child's care seats, contraceptives, smoking cessation products and women's sanitary products)?

Aldi and Lidl provide a proper VAT summary (showing totals for ZR and SR goods) on their till receipts unlike Tesco etc where you have a lot of work caused by having to add up individually coded amounts off a long till receipt.

Aldi and Lidl provide a proper VAT summary (showing totals for ZR and SR goods) on their till receipts unlike Tesco etc where you have a lot of work caused by having to add up individually coded amounts off a long till receipt.

When a till receipt has 30 individual amounts, mixed ZR and SR interspersed, a calculator could be used. Preferably, if an audit trail is to be kept to justify the VAT claim, a printing calculator. It takes time. Quicker and possibly cheaper to use Aldi or Lidl who do the work for you. If you had lots of these Tesco receipts to book keep you'd you'd soon tire of it, unless you have enthusiasm for tedious extra work.

What I tend to do with these tedious Tesco (/Sainsburys / Asda) receipts is mark the SR items then add these up, divide this total by 6 = the VAT, attach till receipt to an A5 sheet of paper on which the proper VAT summary is then handwritten for the VAT records / writing up. I retain my preference for following the excellent lead taken by Aldi and Lidl on this one - they do the tedious work for you, that is "oh so difficult!" for their bigger competitors.

I found this thread googling for advice on accounting for supermarket food receipts.

Might be a dumb question but I'm putting in expenses for meals while freelancing. I go to Sainsburys and get a meal deal. The fruit juice and crisps are marked with an asterisk to show there is VAT, and the sandwich doesn't. The total is £6.25, but the meal deal discount takes it down to £3. If it was all VATable or there was no discount I'd normally put in one receipt for the VAT items, and another with the non-vat, so we reclaim the correct amount. But i'm baffled about how to account for the discount on the total.